


Ask for those kings

by ficpost



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ficpost/pseuds/ficpost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,<br/>And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask for those kings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dedkake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedkake/gifts).



> merry christmas, lauren!

(July)

They can't use the room he'd shared with Sybil. It's too painful, too public, and much too small, though by only a few meters lengthwise, as though the house grapples with its devotion to its youngest and its staunch disapproval of her spouse. They need room. They need privacy. They need to be able to move Tom from his to theirs without one or more of them creeping past Edith’s.

The entire house is terribly set up, Mary thinks, for an affair. She plays idly with the bedclothes and remembers the sheer difficulty of getting a corpse down the hall unnoticed. A live man is better explained, but a live man must explain himself, and that won’t do. If anyone is to explain this affair, it really ought to be her.

She makes a wry face. The word implies infidelity, which is quite the opposite of the real situation. There is no duplicity. A heart cannot possibly be broken in their little arrangement. The contrary is true.

As if to punctuate her point, Tom takes a shuddering breath beside her. She puts a soothing hand on his back, palm up, knuckles brushing over the warm curve of his spine. There it is—the muffled tick of the mantel clock as the night slinks into morning—and Matthew’s arm tightens around her torso, breath slow and hot on her neck. Pleasure builds deep in her abdomen, but she hasn’t the heart to wake either of them.

Besides, all they’ve done is sleep, honestly—and why _does_ it seem like such a sneaking game, she wonders, to bring Tom into their bedroom to do nothing but hold each other and sleep—and it’d be too abrupt and awkward to suggest anything new now, at this moment, while the two of them are only just easing themselves into this vulgar liaison like ducklings encountering water for the first time.

She can’t help but think of herself as the most experienced, despite their actual levels of experience—and it’s not she doesn’t shiver and blush at the slightest pressure of Matthew’s lips on her neck or his palms against her breasts—and, she realizes, she has no idea about Tom, but she doesn’t want to think about that. He misses her, possibly more than anyone, although sometimes when she thinks of Sybil she wonders that her heart doesn’t slow and stop from the pain. Her hand stills on his back, and she counts the seconds before his next breath.

If she’s to have Tom, and if Matthew is to have Tom, and if Tom’s to have both of them, she must stop thinking of him as a poor lost child. He needs them, but he is strong—he’s a father—they need him with equal urgency. God knows she does. She thinks it proof enough for Matthew that his love was feverish and desperate the night she’d brought it up. He’d never say it out loud, not in the exact words, but she can barely bring herself to even _think_ them, despite the constant murmur of her forming plan.

Matthew’s nose tickles her ear. He doesn’t seem to be asleep. He’d know the signs—they would have spent months, years in bed if they could have, learning the unspoken hints of arousal, although given the weeks they had after the wedding she thinks she knows him pretty well—yes, that is his thumb on her hip, drawing circles. She rests her cheek against his forehead.

He murmurs something that she can’t make out, but she doesn’t prompt him to repeat himself.

— — —

(March)

She observes him at dinner, every evening, when he steels himself and forcefully keeps his eyes from shifting to Sybil’s place. She knows Matthew does too. There are things they say to each other, over their square-bottomed and masculine scotch glasses, that she can never know, but she hopes that their friendship will remain as strong as the day he stood and witnessed their wedding.

To the baby—Sybbie, her grandmother calls her, a name that has caught onto them all like a tiny hand around a finger—he is nothing but devoted, not that she expects any less. Not that any of them, really, can expect any less. She observes him with Sybbie, quite free to do so, now, because his eyes never leave the baby’s face, and he seems to know nothing outside that little bundle. She feels Matthew’s hand upon her own, and wishes it could be over her belly.

And then she observes him with Matthew—who has gotten up and strolled over, and who gently nudges Tom back into reality, who puts a hand on his elbow so tenderly that even she can feel it from her chaise six paces away. Tom puts Sybbie into Matthew’s arms, and Mary feels some emotion swell inside her, but Granny says something at that moment to cousin Isobel, and she finds the chance to pull her thoughts away.

— — —

(July)

He murmurs something that she can’t make out, but she doesn’t prompt him to repeat himself, and he’s soon unconscious again. The clock ticks a mesmerizing hour away before sleep comes, and she fights it, wanting to savor this moment before— _the beams so reverend and strong. No_ , she thinks. _Let me have this. I haven’t thought about the morning. I don’t want the morning._

—

The morning is grey, one of those dreary, sodden mornings that drips English melancholy and reminds her of how lovely it is everywhere else—anywhere else. They must have shifted away in the night, because she’s cold; their bed is rather large, after all. It’s just as well.

Both are gone—it’s quite typical of Matthew to rise long before her, having formed the habit out of deference to her shrewd lady’s maid, and, she reasons with herself (over a swell of anxiety), especially if she had forced herself to lie awake for hours the night before. _Go to sleep_ , he had murmured in her ear.

There is no sign of Tom, except that she had woken rather more near the middle of the bed than usual, and that she is sure that his scent lingers.

She stretches her legs to the floor and grimaces at the rain on the window, wondering if they’ve eaten, if Tom will say anything or even look at them, if Matthew will fix him with that look of anticipation and hope he’d always given her before their wedding (and, quite often, after), and if she hasn’t raised suspicions at all within the house’s stately walls.

Anna does not seem any more curious than usual, and Mary knows that if she knew, she’d keep her silence, but her heart still pounds all through their morning ritual, and warmth rises in her cheeks so often that she’s sure the flush alone will give their entire secret away. Anna knew him before Sybil—before, after all, and saw him in the rough, and now they’ve taken him, perverted him, pulled him up the social ladder so far that he might as well be some prostitute they’d plied with Spanish fly.

Anna is waiting for an answer. Mary brings herself back to her dressing room. “I’m sorry—so sorry, what did you say?”

“Only if you’ve slept well, milady.”

There it is again. Even in the misty grey reflection, her face glows pink. “Well enough, yes.”

— — —

(September)

Mary wonders how Sybil might feel about any of this. She likes to imagine that it would all be fine, but thoughts of her sister rise unbidden with every look. He searches for Sybil in Mary’s wider jaw, in her darker hair, in her clearer voice, and finds her. She hopes it doesn’t gnaw at him as it often gnaws at her.

It’s getting better, though. She feels less guilt-ridden and more like she’s been given a double serving of every dessert— _this isn’t for_ your _benefit_ , she chides herself—but it does feel that way. Wonderful, if she’s to give it a word. Degenerate, yes—but wonderful.

The lovemaking is wonderful, but it’s even more wonderful, somehow, in the early morning, when they’re both asleep and she’s alone with the mantel clock and their steady breathing. Tom has shifted (they’ve shifted him) toward the middle, despite protestations. Day by day she watches Matthew slowly come to terms with feelings that cannot be named. She observes them at dinner, and with the baby, and in bed, exchanging slow, exploratory kisses, learning that it’s all right. She thinks she’d be happy if her lot, after this, were only to watch.

It does feel good to be between them, though. Matthew puts himself behind her, warm, supporting, and Tom kneels in front. Sometimes they kiss her—Matthew prefers her lips—and sometimes they kiss each other, hesitant and slow, learning to yield and to control. Tom lets them love him. He gives them every choice, and they reward him for his trust.

—

It comes first to Matthew.

“Darling—”

He’s had a thought. She suspects that it was not quite as spontaneous as he pretends—it more likely came to him the night before, when he’d screwed up his courage and laid a gentle hand on Tom’s—well—that image is hardly appropriate anywhere outside the bedroom—she schools her thoughts and her face into something more seemly, and thinks about it.

Not a soul beside the three of them would know. She clenches her fist in her skirts, and quickly releases it, smoothing the wrinkles. Not a soul _could_ know. A baby.

She wishes, suddenly, that she could marry both, and see them side-by-side, and never suffer a second glance from the servants or her father or anyone in the world. She smoothes the wrinkles again and looks at her husband.

“I think we will have to put it to Tom. But, yes, I think that is—that is a lovely idea.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

Mary can see in his eyes the longing she shares. Later, when Tom half-laughs and half-cries from joy, she thinks that if she loved one man forever, she’d have to split in two.


End file.
